


Hold It True, Whate'er Befall

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e20 Enemy at the Gate, F/M, Friendship, Love, Post-Series, Romance, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:36:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Teyla on Earth, learning how to cope with each other, finding out if they could have more out of their relationship or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SGA Beya Secret Elf exchange in 2010. My recipient was wedjatqi, and this was posted in five parts.

John got the call in Paris as they were standing on the Eiffel Tower looking out across the city in the soft-furling wind of spring.

For a little while that morning, Teyla had been able to forget that she was from another planet, brought to see the sights of Earth while waiting for the IOA to make their decision on Atlantis.

They had done presentations and discussions, cocktail parties and meetings. She had spoken of Pegasus, of the life her people lived, put a face to the crisis that was happening three million light years away in a galaxy that Earth had little reason to care for, save that it had brought the threat of extinction close to home.

The Goa'uld could be bargained with. The Orii needed worshippers. But the Wraith wanted human life, and they would take it without mercy or relent, treating Earth as their cattle grounds as they destroyed all attempts at rebellion and retaliation.

They had stopped that here before it had happened. Now the question was whether the IOA would allow Atlantis to go back to Pegasus, to continue the fight against the Wraith there - to save the millions of Pegasus peoples living under the heel of the Wraith.

It had been John who'd suggested the 'road trip', although there had been rather more travelling by transport beam since Teyla had no passport with which to travel internationally. Rodney had waved it away - he had work to do on the city, and Ronon had claimed he'd seen enough of the cities of Earth the last time he was here for Carson's funeral.

On reflection, Teyla supposed the fact that Amelia Banks had taken leave enough to go camping in Yellowstone National Park and had invited him along might have had a little to do with Ronon's decision.

Now, as John frowned down at the number, the breeze playing havoc with his hair, it all came back in a rush. Her heart leaped up before she forced it to settle. A moment later, John glanced up with a little shake of his head. "It's not any of the official numbers..."

He gave something like a shrug and flipped open the phone.

"This is Sheppard."

His expression shifted, a subtle tensing of his features, and Teyla felt her own body tense in reaction before he simply said, "Dave. I...wasn't expecting to hear from you."

She began to move away to give John some privacy for his conversation with his brother, then stopped, surprised, when he reached out with one hand to grab her wrist.

"We're on leave in Paris right now. I was going to call you when we got back stateside..." His brow furrowed. "Just a friend. No, that was Ronon...." He tensed, and so did Teyla as his grip on her wrist tightened. A moment later, he released her with an apologetic look, although there was no apology in his voice. "Dave, if you ever want to hear from me again, you'll never repeat that - either to me or anyone else. Now what did you want?"

Teyla bit back a wince at the hard tones. She had seen John angry several times before, occasionally with her, more usually at someone else. She had never seen him quite so enraged before - as though what had been spoken was a deliberate insult. What had his brother said that had sent him into such a fury?

In front of her lay Paris in a huge sprawl of buildings and spaces.

She had seen the ruins of Sateda - a city larger than any she had seen before, but this dwarfed even that. The cities of Earth were filled with millions of people - _billions_ of people. Beyond anything that Pegasus could imagine or encompass, crammed into a single planet no larger than Sateda or Gennia or Athos. And only a handful of those billions knew that weeks ago, they had been under threat from an enemy that would not bargain or barter, but who would have drunk their lives up like a sip of wine and never thought twice.

A world at peace, without threat of the Wraith - although they had other enemies here, within their own galaxy. Still, they could live free of the shadow of death.

Pegasus had no such privilege.

"Hey. Sorry about that." John was tucking the phone away.

Teyla shook herself. "What did your brother have to say?"

"Nothing good." He leaned against the railing, staring out across the city, and Teyla wondered if he'd speak again. Then, he shifted. "He wants me to attend a director's dinner in Vegas this weekend. 'Since I'm in town'."

The mimicry was lost on Teyla; she had never met John's brother.

"You do not want to go."

He grimaced as he looked out over Paris. "No. But I should. Dad..." He exhaled. "Dad left me shares and a directorship in the company. With salary and everything, so long as I'm filling the post. Which I'm not."

Bitterness was not unusual when John spoke of his family, but Teyla sensed that there was something more in this. And that he wished to speak of it with her. John did not share his past, and was adept at redirecting the topic if it ever came up. That he was speaking of it now suggested he wished to speak of it.

"You had not spoken for years when he died."

"Yeah. Guess he figured someday I'd get tired of the Air Force and wanted to sweeten the pot if I ever thought about getting out..." His laugh was harsh. "That was Dad all over. If direct didn't work, he went underhand."

There was an old bitterness there, an untended anger.

She wanted to say something to soothe him, but did not know what might help. Teyla understood the pain of an unresolved parental relationship only too well - the sting of her mother's departure had been a stone in her shoe all her life - but she had long since let go of her bitterness. It was what it was, and nothing she could do now would ever change what her mother had been or the legacy she had left Teyla.

As she searched for words, a young family eased past them on the walkway. Teyla shuffled aside to let them pass, and watched them go - mother and son, and a baby held in its father's arms, old enough to toddle but too small to walk around up here without being firmly held. Its chubby arms reached up for the wire that caged the walk, but his father neatly turned away, flashing Teyla a brief, rueful smile as their eyes met before following his wife and other son along the walk.

She watched them go, the baby burbling over his father's shoulder, big dark eyes focusing on her face. And her chest felt suddenly tight, as though it were hard to breathe.

"We'll get you back to them."

She looked back at John and found him watching her. Her throat swelled with choking emotion and she couldn't respond to his statement.

It had been too long since she'd held her son in her arms. Too long since she'd seen Torren. And Kanaan would be wondering if she was dead, if he had lost yet another loved one to the Wraith. If she could not love him as he wished, neither would she cause him deliberate pain. Her continued absence and the attending uncertainty - that would fret him as even her known death would not. Death was final and the healing could begin; it was hope that tore up the insides, clinging to the last vestiges of belief and being torn again and again, like a garment rent too many times for mending.

"I know you will," she told John at last, and her voice held steady as she slipped her hand into his and squeezed lightly. "Thank you."

He looked away, out across the crowded city as colour stained his cheeks and he slipped his hand out of hers, self-conscious.

Teyla took the hint and instead turned back to the city, leaning down on the railing, shoulder to shoulder - as a friend should stand. "So will you go to your brother's dinner then?"

"Maybe." A smile quirked his lips, oddly whimsical. "You could come with."

She stared at him, at first thinking he was jesting, then realising he was serious. "I know nothing of your brother's business."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing, you know. It's mostly people standing around talking and being polite - although they probably won't be polite about you." John stared down at the distant ground and a wry grimace fixed his lips. "On second thought, you probably wouldn't want to be there."

It was not the party itself that gave Teyla pause. In the last few weeks she had attended parties and dinners, luncheons and teas, meetings and presentations - a seemingly endless stream of people who had come to speak of Atlantis and what Earth needed and to stare at the beautiful aliens and wonder at their primitive barbarism in being without the technology or advancement to fight back against those who would take their lives.

Those meetings had been for Pegasus and her people; for Atlantis, which surely deserved better than to be left floating in the sea off the coast of America, used as a base through which people travelled daily but never stayed to live and put down roots.

This dinner would be for John.

So far as Teyla could see, those meetings had been fruitless and without benefit in the end. With each day that passed, it seemed less and less likely that Earth would ever let Atlantis return to the Pegasus galaxy, and her people would be consigned to slow extinction by the Wraith.

She could do nothing about that anymore, the decision was out of her hands.

But this? This she could do for a friend. Support and encouragement, and a retreat should he need it - the comfort of one person he could trust without question at such an event.

"You do not wish to go."

"Yeah, well, you know me and social things. It's okay. I'll survive it. Maybe. If I'm not out after four hours, you might have to get Rodney and Ronon and come rescue me." He said it lightly, but he stared out into the air as though he saw nothing before him, felt nothing around him - not the city, not Teyla, not the wind that tossed his hair loose around his head.

She pressed against his shoulder, a light and tender bump. "I will come with you to the dinner. If your brother does not mind."

He turned to look at her. "You'd come to the dinner?"

"Someone must watch your six," she pointed out, and allowed her smile to touch her lips when he began to grin.

"It's not a combat situation, Teyla. Although, well..." John gave a short half-laugh. "I did have Ronon watching my back last time."

"Then it is settled," Teyla said. "If you do not mind me accompanying you?"

"No," he answered, his voice softer now. "I don't mind at all."


	2. Chapter 2

"So who is she, really?"

John tore his gaze away from Teyla as she walked through the ballroom on her way to the ladies' and tried not to feel like he was being cornered.

It was only his brother wandering up, glasses of champagne in his hands, one clearly meant for John. A brotherly chat to seal the 'surprise' of John Sheppard's appearance at a Sheppard Industries function, to give the appropriate gloss to the night, and show the united front of Sheppards to those fretting about the company's future.

Teyla had already chided John for being cynical about his appearance here tonight. And because it seemed to matter to her, he'd promised to be on his more diplomatic behaviour. The warning look she'd shot him had warmed him through to his toes, and John had walked into the ballroom with her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, smiling like a fool.

Accustomed to the hierarchies of rank in his corner of the Air Force, to the reluctant respect that accompanied his name in Stargate Command, to the basic politeness that covered the politics of the IOA's machinations like icing on a burned cake, John had forgotten how the gossip mills worked in this part of the world.

He'd forgotten that the only explanation for a no-name woman walking in on the arm of the brother of the director of Sheppard Industries would be that she was fucking him.

And the questions had probed the nature of the relationship between Teyla and him all night.

John had hoped to escape the interrogation with Dave at least.

"I told you, we work together."

"She's not military."

"I don't just work with the military." John grimaced. "She's like Ronon - a local contact."

"Diplomatic corps?" Dave leaned back against the railing John had been carefully propping up all night. "Ronon didn't look like a diplomat."

"Yeah, but you also thought that he and I..." John bit that off before it could go any further and stared grimly at the bubbles in the champagne. He wanted a drink, but not of bubbly.

"Look, I'm sorry. I assumed and..."

"And if you said that to anyone and it got to the wrong ears, I'd be discharged." Out of the Air Force. Cut off from Atlantis. Sent home to...this. John looked around the room and wondered if it made any difference.

He wasn't blind. Oh, he had been at first, but Rodney had smacked him upside the head. _And what do you think happens now, Sheppard? The IOA lets the most powerful weapon they've ever had just fly on back to Pegasus?_

And John had seen the future unravel before his eyes.

Atlantis grounded - stuck on Earth, upsetting the balances of power but unable to make a real difference in world politics. Protecting the billions on Earth from any possible threat while millions of Pegasus people died at the hands of the Wraith. Stripped down for the scientists to ooh and ahh at, but never to fly again, never to be lived in again - a city peopled by her children.

"Would it be so bad?" Dave asked. "You've done your time, John. You've been in for over twenty. You could get out, take retirement. Do something else with your life..."

"Like this?" John waved a hand at the lights, the people, their clothing, and the chatter of voices above the tinkling music of the band hired to play something old-time and gently jazzy. "Dinners and meetings and corporate raiding? That's not me, Dave."

"Dad's dead, John."

He turned to look at his brother. "And you think that makes a difference?"

"I know that was part of the reason you went into the Air Force - so you wouldn't have to rely on Dad. And you stayed because--"

"Because I liked the work." John knew his voice was flat, could see Dave's jaw set at the antagonism in it. "Because I was good at what I did - and I'm good at what I do. We're needed out there, Dave."

"You're needed out there? You, John Sheppard?"

"Yes."

John didn't hesitate in answering, didn't let himself hesitate in spite of his doubts, in spite of the fear that had clutched him hard and painful for that one moment. He _was_ needed.

He'd seen what happened when good people were left to bad commanders. He'd seen what happened when civilian locals came up against an indifferent military. He'd given his life for enemies as well as friends, and seen both enemy and friend give up their lives for him. He'd seen humanity and inhumanity, in inhuman and human form...

Someone had to fight the good fight. It might as well be him, John Sheppard.

"And when they ship you home in a box?" Dave asked.

 _Remember that village, Shep?_ Charlie Holland had asked, battered, bruised, squinting up into the twilight as they waited for nightfall, for a rescue that never came. _The balance comes due. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We don't believe in that anymore, but it's still true._

The others had paid with their lives - why should John be any different?

He shrugged as though it wasn't important. "Then I went out in a fight that mattered. Look, you've got the company, you've got my vote for whatever it means. I don't want the money - I told you that at the funeral."

"And does Teyla know you don't want the money?"

"We're not like that." John kept his voice level and even, although his gut churned. If he could have offered Teyla that kind of stability - if he thought she'd accept sanctuary and safety here on Earth for her and Torren - he'd have given it to her in a heartbeat.

But it wasn't in Teyla to seek safety at any cost. She'd refused to give up motherhood to continue to fight the Wraith, or to go back to her people to raise her son and relinquish the fight. John had been troubled by it at first. Yet in the end, he'd accepted the mother and the fighter both. She was Teyla; if she wanted to walk on water and fly, he wasn't going to bind her feet and clip her wings.

"You're not like that?"

"No," John said, the roil of his gut intensifying as he caught sight of the red dress emerging from the side corridor and glancing over to where he stood with Dave. "She's got a husband and a child back home."

"That doesn't stop some."

John tore his eyes away from Teyla. "She's not Dad."

Dave's snort made his disbelief clear. "If you say so."

"I say so." He turned back to watch her move through the crowd with the elegant grace of someone who'd spent her life adapting to the people she was among. "She's not after the money or the prestige and she couldn't give a shit about our name or business. Her life's back with her people."

And if Atlantis stayed on Earth, John would have to live with losing her. With losing Ronon. With losing Rodney - because Rodney would become part of the group working on Atlantis, or be absorbed back into the Stargate Program's labs.

And John? John would become one more soldier, shuffled back and forth from planet to planet, without hearth, without home, without family. Another assignment, another base, another mission.

"I hope I am not interrupting." Teyla said with an easy smile as she reached them. "Mr Sheppard, your party is lovely."

"We try to bring out the big guns at least once a year. I hope you're enjoying it."

"Very much so." She snagged the still-untouched glass of champagne from John's hand and offered him the beer with a wry smile.

He ignored Dave's raised brows at the drink swap. "It's not as strong as your ruus wine."

"That is not a bad thing," Teyla said with a smile. "John, I am going to go for a wander. I believe Rodney said the fountains outside play music at certain times..."

"We weren't discussing anything personal, Ms. Emmagan," said Dave, instantly. "I was just talking to John about coming back to the company."

"And I was just telling him that hell would freeze over first. Nicely, of course."

"Of course," she echoed. "It must be difficult, Mr. Sheppard, to manage the interests of such a large company."

"No more complicated than diplomatic work, I imagine. John said you're a local contact for the American military. That would make things difficult for you, I suppose. The American military doesn't seem to be well-loved in many parts of the world."

Teyla sipped her champagne delicately. "It is true it is a job requiring a great deal of delicacy. Long-term relationships between John's people and mine have been beneficial to both parties so far and hope that they will continue in the future."

"John tells me you're married. So what does your husband do while you're off being diplomatic?"

John glared at his brother. The lean on 'being diplomatic' had a distinct leer in it. Teyla never even blinked. "Torren's father looks after him. His skills are better suited to remaining within the community."

"While yours are better suited travelling around the world?"

Her lips curved in amusement. "Is it not said among your people that it takes a village to raise a child, Mr Sheppard? My village is helping me and the father raise my child. Kanaan does not do it alone, nor do I absent myself from Torren's upbringing."

"But if you're away all the time..."

"Some of the time, although lately, more rather than less due to...difficulties." A shadow crossed Teyla's face and if it had been anyone but Dave, John would have told his brother to back off. But he was hamstrung - caught by what Dave thought was happening between him and Teyla, and the knowledge that he needed to let Teyla fight this one on her own. "Torren knows his mother's love, and that life is uncertain. He knows that I would not abandon him if there were other choices. And someday he will have to make the choices I make, too."

"Most parents would prefer their children didn't have to make the choices they had to."

"Yes, that is the nature of parenthood," Teyla said, smiling as though Dave hadn't just criticised her parenting. "Yet things do not change as fast as we might wish - parent or child. You have no children of your then?"

For the first time since the start of the conversation, John saw his brother hesitate. "Not yet. Excuse me." A couple were making their way across the floor towards them - important people that John recognised from the papers and the reports Dave had been sending him - and Dave went down to meet them, giving John a breather.

Teyla settled against the railing beside him, now turning to face the room. "He asks a lot of questions without offering anything in return."

"He learned it from Dad." John watched his brother cross the room with the group. "Sorry about the interrogation."

She smiled. "I did not come here expecting - what is it that Rodney calls it? 'A free pass' from your family and friends. Although I am sorry that my presence has caused you such scrutiny."

"You're sorry? Hell, Teyla, _I'm_ sorry they're interrogating _you_ about _me_." John exhaled and took a swig of beer, let the taste linger on his tongue as though it could rid him of the guilty sense of having somehow taken advantage of Teyla's offer to accompany him here.

He hadn't intended for her to become a topic of gossip for the people here. At least, he didn't think he had.

The problem was that John wasn't sure of his motives when it came to Teyla now.

"John?" Her touch drew his attention back, her fingers warm on his wrist as she squeezed lightly. It was the same tender touch that she'd given him up on the Eiffel Tower. Friendship and care and concern - all the things he had from her, but not as much as he wanted.

John couldn't have what he wanted. So he would settle for what he had.

"I'm here."

"Yes," she said, gently. "You are."


	3. Chapter 3

"It was not as bad as you said it would be," Teyla said as she crossed the room to sank into the soft lounge by the window. Her shoes were high-heeled and she had to curl her legs up beneath her to reach the buckles.

"It was still bad." John stared out at the glittering city spread out before them, his hands tucked into his jacket pockets. A casual pose, but for the tension that tightened his shoulders as he stood there.

Teyla sighed quietly to herself. It was good that she had been there, even if John persisted in believing he had put her in the way of intrusive questions. After so many years in Atlantis, Teyla was no stranger to intrusive questions.

She slipped off her shoes and joined him at the window, looking out at the glittering lights and the movement of the people down in the street below. They were so small and so many, they might have been a colony of bugs, moving through the structures of their own making, thoughtless and heedless of the great foot about to stomp down upon them...

John interrupted her thoughts. "We didn't have to shoot anyone at least."

Her mouth curved as she glanced at him sideways, noting the shadows beneath his eyes. "Then perhaps this mission can count as a success?"

"I guess." He dropped his gaze, eyes sliding away as though unable to look upon her. "Thanks for coming."

Her fingers itched to reach out to him again, but she kept her hands tucked into her elbows. "You would have done the same were our places reversed."

"Oh, I don't know. Fates worse than death and all..." He trailed off with what should have been a smile on his lips and which looked more like a grimace. His eyes locked onto hers. Then he turned on his heel and headed back into the main room. "I need a drink."

Teyla did not follow him to the bar, but turned her face resolutely to the city and let her eyes roam. She was beginning to grow worried about John's moods.

At first, he had seemed to enjoy himself as they travelled around, pointing out the things of interest, telling her stories about the places they went - of the people who lived there, or who had died there, or had lived there, but a long time ago and no longer. But then, as the vacation stretched on and there was nothing heard about Atlantis, she had found him absent-minded, his thoughts elsewhere, and all her attempts to draw him back had been in vain.

Behind her, she heard the tinkle of ice cubes, the chink of glass, the gurgle of liquid. Then footsteps as John came to stand alongside her again, and offered her a glass. "Want one? It's scotch."

"The drink we had the night after we returned to Atlantis?"

"This one's better."

The taste was smoother than Teyla recalled, and she let the warmth and cool of it lick her tongue and throat as she watched Las Vegas pass by below. John stood at her elbow, saying nothing, just silent and still and comfortable.

A good relationship. No need to complicate it with other things, surely?

She tilted the glass of scotch in her hand, considering.

John was not willing, Teyla decided with a sideways glance at him; she would not press it. Should they return to Atlantis, it might well be that there would be another time. And if not, she had his friendship and his respect and would keep that, she trusted, whatever the outcome regarding the city.

She finished the alcohol and prepared to bid John goodnight and go to bed.

When she looked up, he was watching her with unreadable eyes. As she watched, he tossed back his own glass and set it down on the table beside him, took hers from her hands and slid it beside, then stepped in close, took her jaw in his hands and brought his mouth gently down on hers.

Teyla's breath caught and her lips parted beneath his.

She tasted scotch and sweetness, uncertainty and a terrible tenderness as his hand cupped her nape and her senses flickered alight like tinder to flame. Uncertainty transmuted to sureness, hesitance to eagerness, and when she skimmed her hands up his arms to clasp his neck, his hands came down to rest on her hips.

Light kisses at first, tasting and testing, exploring the ways he liked to be kissed, trying the ways she liked him to kiss her.

John's hands flexed on her hips, and Teyla pressed herself against him, her breasts brushing his chest, and felt him shiver. His eyes were very green, their gaze intense as he looked down at her. "Teyla?"

Did she think he would slap him for kissing her?

In answer, she slid her hands around his nape and pressed him down to her. And he came.

Gently at first, tentative, then harder, as though a hunger in him had been unleashed and raked at him with sharp claws. Teyla welcomed the hunger, the demand in his kisses, giving in to the desire that had always traced her with a single pointed nail when it came to John Sheppard. She kissed him back, letting her hands grasp him a little too hard as she encouraged his hands to stroke her through her dress.

It wasn't enough. Chaste kisses, fully clothed? No. Teyla wanted him in her, riding her, beneath her. She wanted to feel his hands on her skin, to watch him gasp when she cradled him in her palms, to feel him shudder as she sucked him into her mouth and took his seed on her tongue. She wanted his fingers probing her, parting her nether lips, wanted his smart mouth on her bud, sucking hard while she writhed.

Her encounter with Kanaan had been simple need after death and despair - comfort and comfortable. It had produced Torren and she would ever be grateful for it, but it was not what she craved.

This desire was neither comforting, nor comfortable.

Teyla broke away, leaving his hands empty and his chest heaving. His mouth worked as he swallowed. "Did I do...?"

She reached behind her and undid the sash of her dress - a scarlet strip that came undone with the first tug. The back of her dress was only just above it, and she unzipped it down her spine to the small of her back as John watched, his eyes dark with molten desire as the silky material drooped, robbed of its tension.

As she peeled the dress from her shoulders, John made a noise like a groan. His hands flexed by his sides, as though he yearned to reach for her, but he didn't move as she stepped out of the fallen dress and stood before him in her undergarments. The bra and panties and stockings matched - the first two made of seamless black lace that had sat against her flesh all night, the last pressed upon her by the salesgirl who had sold her the undergarments.

 _He'll love you in these, I'm sure!_

From the way his throat worked and the growing swell in his trousers, Teyla supposed John did.

She took his hands then, long fingers rough with the callouses of his weapons, and pressed her lace-clad breasts into them. For a moment after she took her hands away, he was perfectly still, looking down at the flesh his hands cupped.

Then he swooped. His lips closed over her mouth as his thumbs twitched the lace edges down over her nipples. Teyla arched into his hands, into his mouth, and could barely think to undo the clasp of her bra as John's head bent to take first one tip, then the other in his mouth, his tongue swirling over her areola and drawing a sharp gasp from her at the pleasure.

When he straightened up, he was smiling - that half-smile of pleasure that wasn't quite a grin but had edges of smugness about it. "Not here," he said. "I want you properly, in a bed."

"Your bed or mine?"

"Mine."

Yet he seemed hesitant to take the lead, and it was Teyla who moved, taking his hand and walking through the suite of rooms to the bedroom John had taken as his own. It was neat enough: the bed made, John's afternoon clothes tossed over his suitcase, a discarded tie tossed over the chair. But when he tried to step away from her, muttering something about it being messy, Teyla closed her hand about his and would not let him go.

"No." She turned him to face her. "I am not here for your neat room, John."

He looked her over, nearly naked before him, and his expression grew soft. "I guess you want me undressed?"

"Unless you would rather not. I could always push you down to the bed and ride you through your clothes." Teyla smiled, thinking that she should like to try that later, then cupped his groin in her hand, her fingers squeezing him through the fine cloth so he moaned. "But this time, I should prefer you naked. Strip, John."

"Do I have to make a show of it?"

She rubbed her hands across the material of his trousers, feeling out the swell of his erection and the heavy weight of his balls. "If you wish. The result is the same."

A fine pearl of sweat broke out out on his forehead, and he tore at the buttons as he tried to get his shirt off. One of the cuffs caught over his hand, and while he was fumbling with it, Teyla knelt and took the tip of the bulge in his trousers in her mouth, sucking on cloth and the hot flesh she could feel beneath the layers of material.

The little _pop_ of the cuff button in the air was lost on John's moan. "Fuck, Teyla! Oh, God. D-don't--"

She took her mouth off for mere moments - long enough to undo his belt buckle and drag down his trousers and the boxer shorts beneath. Then there was hot salty flesh in her mouth, and John's hands clenched in her hair as she stroked her mouth over him, up him, down him. She danced her fingers up his calves and worked her lips over the soft flesh of his scrotum as he panted and protested and finally tore himself away.

"Not like that," he said, and a high flush ran his cheeks and hoarsened his voice. "I don't want you like that."

"How, then?"

He kissed her, hard and soft and sweet and strangely bitter. Reckless, like a man with nothing to lose, and tender, like a man with everything to give. Warm hands skimmed her, stroked her, shaped her, stoked her. When he pressed his fingers against the lace between her thighs, the sharp ache of need became a knife in her flesh.

John walked her backwards, his fingers learning her responses as his mouth nipped and bit and suckled hers. Then there was mattress against the back her legs and she was falling backwards with a gasp of surprise, and sprawled on his bed, legs parted, her cleft aching and empty.

As he knelt on the bed over her, his gaze on her like a caress, Teyla slid her hand under the edge of her panties, testing her readiness, watching him swallow. Her bud pulsed under her finger and she stroked herself once, hard, just to ground her body. Everything burned, ached, yearned, and it only grew worse when John touched her wrist.

"Let me."

And he pressed her hands down to the mattress, bent his head, and licked her through the wet lace.

Teyla whimpered, her hips arching off the bed back into his mouth. And John's tongue pushed back - oh, Ancestors! So soft and so hard, long slick strokes through rough lace. His rhythms stoked the ache in her, her body demanding more, harder, higher, again, again!

Dimly, the thought registered that she should tell him to stop, should push him away and pleasure him in response, should take him inside her and lose herself in him, in his release, but her trembling hand could do no more than flex in his unruly hair, and her tongue could form no words through the thick haze of his tongue's intent.

So Teyla dug her nails into the coverlet as her body shuddered and shivered and splintered into a thousand tiny pinpricks of pleasure and great fires of sensation. And she fell, fell, fell into the vast and pleasurable darkness with John's lips brushing her through the lace in a kiss of exquisite tenderness.


	4. Chapter 4

John woke in the darkness with a start and reached out blindly for Teyla.

He stopped himself just as his fingers grazed skin. The soft curve of her hip, before the skin pulled taut over her hipbone and slid softly into her lower abdomen and the mound of her pubis...

His cock ached, desire threatening stiffness. John grimaced in the darkness as the beers he'd drunk earlier that night made themselves known via his bladder. If he kept thinking about Teyla sleeping on the other side of the bed, he'd piss in his own face.

Easing himself out from beneath the covers was one kind of hell.

Washing his hands in the basin afterward was another.

He glanced up once while reaching for the liquid soap, saw the guilt in his eyes when he met his gaze in the mirror, and looked quickly away as he rinsed the suds down the drain.

If only he could get rid of the guilt so easily.

He dried his hands and went out into the bedroom, and paused in the doorway with his hand over the switch.

Teyla was easing herself up from the bed, blinking sleepily in the light. John's mouth went dry just looking at her, and his cock began to throb. _Oh, God, no._

She squinted up at him through the stretched frame of light that fell across the bed and said huskily, "Leave the light on, please."

He did, and tried not to watch as she tugged her fallen-down stockings back up her thighs before she went into the bathroom and closed the door behind, leaving him in darkness.

John sat down on the edge of the bed and shivered.

They'd fucked in the sheets with long, slow thrusts, Teyla arching in another orgasm while John sank into her flesh, and tried not to spend himself too soon. He'd revelled in her cries as she came, aching as she clenched around him, spilling himself hotly into her, her name on his lips, muffled in her throat.

You screwed up, Sheppard. Again.

He'd been stupid and greedy, wanting more than he could have; taking more than he was allowed to keep. Making love to a woman who wasn't his to have.

She's got a husband and child back home.

The words had been true when he'd said them to Dave earlier that night. It was still true now.

John had never intended this. He'd thought the reminder might be enough to keep the lines clear between them - the stark truth that Kanaan of Athos waited for Teyla to come back, that she'd had a son by another man, that there was a child who waited for his mom to come home and make them a family again.

He put his head in his hands and swallowed.

Did it hurt more to think that he'd just become the other man in her bed? Or to think that this could only ever be temporary?

The toilet flushed, the faucet ran, and the bathroom door opened.

Teyla paused on the threshold of the room, like a backlit goddess stepping from pale pearly light into darkness and shadow. And John sat on the edge of the bed and felt himself grow erect. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong. But he wanted her. He wanted her and she was standing there, and looking at him with sleepy eyes that heated as she surveyed him.

His balls ached and so did something in his chest, but John knew he wasn't done with Teyla by a long shot.

From the way her expression heated as she looked at him, she wasn't done with him either.

She turned off the light and darkness took the room. But John reached over to the bedside light. If he was going to do this, he was going to be sure Teyla knew who she had in her arms, who she had in her body.

Her hand slipped into his, and she came to him with a kiss, her bottom settling on John's thighs as he drew her down into his lap. Her other hand settled on his cock, and John groaned as she wrapped her fingers around him and stroked hard and slow.

Lightning in his belly, in his balls. The wonderful torment of her hand sliding over him, gripping him firm and fierce until he thought he might go mad from the pleasure.

"Go easy on me," he murmured against her mouth.

"Perhaps I do not want you easy," Teyla nipped his lower lip between her teeth, sending a sharp tremor through him. Then she quivered as his hands skimmed her body, tugged lightly on her nipples. "You learn fast, John."

"When I want to," he agreed, sliding his hands down to her bottom and encouraging her up on her knees so his mouth could reach her breasts more easily.

He nibbled his way around the outer curve of her breast, scraping his teeth against the full flesh as he made his way up, pressing his cheek into her skin to make her gasp with the rough of his stubble. Then he brushed his mouth across her nipple, nothing more than a soft, wet lick before skimming across to the other one and sucking it into his mouth.

Teyla's breath caught in her throat, and John revelled in the little whimpering sounds she made as he worked her nipple in his mouth. His hands slid between her thighs, coaxing, caressing. No penetration, no playing with her clit, just the tormenting slide of his fingers along the slick tissue until her nails dug into his back in warning.

The pain arced through his body, a focus, jolting him hard, yanking him back into his body.

"Enough!" Teyla's fingers closed about his wrist, and John let himself have one last, sweet suckle before he let her push him down to the bed.

Then the breath hissed out of him as Teyla lowered herself and stroked her cleft the length of his cock - no penetration, just a long, slick slide of wet flesh dragging at his erection. John groaned and thumped his head on the mattress, his hands gripping her thighs as he half-levered himself off the bed.

"Gently," she told him with a hitch of laughter in her voice. "And I will be very good to you."

John forced himself to loosen his hold on her, to lie still as she stroked his cock with her cleft - too high for penetration, too light to do more than tease him. And watching the purring heat in her eyes as she pushed herself to the edge on his prone body was heaven and hell at once.

Possession, when it came, was sudden.

She took him in one great thrust, a raw, wet sheathing. And John arched into her, his hands rough on her hips, dragging her down onto him while his heels dug into the mattress.

Then moaned when she settled on his hips and her inner muscles squeezed him tight. "Teyla!"

He scraped his hands up her sides, making her shiver, and tried to flex his pelvis enough to get a little friction - just a little - oh, _God_ it felt good to move in her like this! But it wasn't enough. He couldn't get enough leverage to satisfy him, but if the closed eyes, and bitten lip was any indication, it was working for her.

"Do you like that?"

Her lashes lifted at his question, and John thrust again and smirked to hear her gasp. "Perhaps I like it more when you beg to please me, John."

The words crawled into his brain, slid under his skin. John quivered at the thought of Teyla riding him like this minute after minute, of feeling her orgasm shudder through her body and his over and over and over while he pleaded to be allowed to come in her.

"Do you want me to beg?"

"No," she said and rose off him, nearly to the tip before she sank back down again. He couldn't keep from groaning as she leaned close. "But ask me to satisfy you, John, and I will."

It caught in his throat, like something he'd tried to swallow and which had gone down the wrong way. Begging was one thing; but asking, as though he had the right to be answered?

John let his eyes linger on her face, familiar and tender, rising over him like the sun. And his voice was hoarse as he asked, "Will you?"

"I will."

She bent and kissed him with soft, biting nips. _Frissons_ of sensation tingled across his skin.

And she began to move on him, sweet, swift thrusts that he met as fiercely as he could, watching her fray at the edges as their release drew closer - feeling himself fray as she moved on him.

His world became Teyla. Her breasts in his hands, her nipples caught between his fingers, the slick slide of her flesh against his cock. The universe narrowed down to nothing more than the sheets and mattress under him, the hard bite of her grip on his shoulders as she rode him, slow and steady, the aching need in her eyes as she went over the edge.

John gripped her hips as she orgasmed, plunging as deeply into her as he could, keeping the friction going between them. And she clenched around him - Oh God! - and shuddered and gasped his name, and kept riding, pushing him beyond endurance with every stroke, her eyes on her face.

Her expression ached.

And John ached, too, with every thrust, with every gasp, with every groan.

Completion came, fierce and bright as an explosion, and John cried out in shuddering relief. He spilled into her, moving until his body and soul were empty, poured out, spent.

Satisfied in body, at least.

Teyla drooped down over him, her hair making a curtain either side of her face as she propped herself up on her wrists. John barely had the energy to help her off him, to ease her back down to the mattress. He guided her down beside him, finding the strength to coax her into his arms as he pulled up the covers and turned off the light.

She nestled into the cradle of his body like she'd been made for it. And John let himself curl around her and knew she'd stay here with him tonight.

Somewhere, beyond the night, the enormity of what he'd done - what they'd done - lurked, waiting to swallow him whole. John would pay the price - he could have hotel rooms on Earth and maybe some stolen moments in Atlantis, but nothing openly - nothing in public.

It wouldn't last long enough. It would never last long enough for John. One morning, they'd wake up and Atlantis would be going back - it _had_ to be going back - and he'd lose her to her people, to her family. To a man she'd chosen to father her son, with whom she'd chosen to make a life.

But she'd chosen this, too. Chosen to have John, here and now.

Maybe this wasn't what he wanted, but he'd take it as long as she offered it.

John would hold tight to what he had for as long as he had it.


	5. Chapter 5

In the sharp morning light, the world looked very different, both inside the suite and outside.

Teyla cupped her hands around her mug of tea and avoided looking at John's bedroom door.

What had seemed so simple in the night, in lamplight and the mystery of the dark, seemed much more bald in the morning. John's mouth on hers, his hands on her body, his flesh in hers - they all seemed distant, like another world.

Of course, they were not. She still bore the marks of his passion on her flesh, although one would have to look closely to notice. The faint scrapes of his beard-bristle had scraped the skin of her breasts and throat and thighs. There were tender spots on her hips, where his fingers had dug too hard. And of course, her cleft was a little sore and a little raw.

It had been some time since she had slept with Kanaan, even before they agreed that his stay in Atlantis wasn't working out. Twice only since Torren's birth, and both times more comfort than desire.

 _We are not, I think, as well suited to be lovers as friends,_ he had said after that last. Painfully, perhaps, but with the honesty that he had always held true to, even in the darkest times. The acknowledgement had been balm and relief in the face of Teyla's own feelings of guilt. _The reasons we never came together before are no less. Given all that has passed between since then, they may even be more._

She had freed him at his request, and he had freed her in return.

Yet she had not shared this with anyone. Not with John or Rodney, not with Ronon, although she had little doubt Ronon had guessed when Kanaan went back to live among the Athosians. Ronon was no dimwit, nor ignorant of her customs, for all he was not given to chatter.

And now, sitting in the warm sunlight of an Earth morning, looking out at the buildings of the city, and the dusty haze of the desert air beyond, Teyla found herself wondering what last night had been to John.

Desire, yes. Need and hunger and passion and tenderness.

Teyla felt her cheeks flush at the intimate memories and took another sip of tea. In the night, it had been enough. In the morning...

Things looked different by day.

Soon, they must return to Atlantis, whether or not the city would be going back to Pegasus, and then...what?

She would have to wait until John woke and arose before that question could be answered. And, in spite of all that had passed between them in the night, Teyla feared the answer.

A soft buzzing caught her attention and it took her a few moments to realise it was John's phone in his room.

Teyla took another sip and reminded herself that she had faced John under worse circumstances before. At least this need have no shades of recrimination as had her announcement of her pregnancy.

The buzzing ended, and the cadences of John's voice were audible through the closed door - little more than a murmur. Then the door opened and he strode out, clad in silky boxers.

"Wait a minute, I'm getting Teyla..."

He checked upon seeing her sitting at the kitchenette bench, before his mouth seemed to firm. "It's Rodney. The IOA's come to a decision about Atlantis..."

He set the phone so it would project the call through the room. Rodney was still talking. "...some kind of politics involved. I didn't ask because we were too busy trying to get the hyperdrive arrays working-- Can you see that I'm on a call right now? Yes, of course this is important! Do you think I'd be--" The diversion was over almost as soon as it had begun. "You wouldn't believe the idiots they've got around here. I don't' know how any of them survived at the SGC..."

Teyla grimaced. Yet something in her breast leaped. Rodney was working on the hyperdrives. Surely that meant...

"Rodney!" John snapped, his knuckles white on the bench edge. "The decision?"

"Oh. We're going back, of course!"

A lump formed in Teyla's throat, tears of relief and gratitude that she dared not weep, even before John. They were going home.

"Lift-off is supposed to be in seventy-two hours - we've got that long to get everything working. You'll have to contact one of the ships to get you over here in time - I shouldn't even be making this call, it's not like I have the time for it. But I thought it was important to get hold of you-- Where the hell are you, anyway?"

Teyla looked at John and found him already watching her. As her eyes rested upon him, a shadow crossed his face. "Vegas."

"Vegas, huh? And, hey, wait a minute. Why are you sharing a room?"

She felt her cheeks heat, but said in her coolest voice, "It is a suite of rooms, Rodney, and I was out in the kitchen when you called John."

"Whatever. Look, I need to get back to this or we'll be going absolutely nowhere. Just get back here as soon as you can."

"We're moving, Rodney." John terminated the call before Rodney could get a response in and looked at Teyla, the start of a smile on his lips, in his eyes. "Home."

"Yes," Teyla said, and gasped when he turned to her and wrapped his arms around her, hot skin against the light cotton of her shirt, under the cheek she turned to rest against his shoulder for just one moment. "It will be good to go home."

She felt him tense, then the careful way he relaxed. "Yeah. It will." Then he couldn't seem to let go fast enough, his eyes slipping away as he swiped the phone off the table. "I'll get in contact with Caldwell. Can we be ready to go in an hour?"

John hurried away to pack, clearly unwilling to talk about what had happened last night. Teyla waited until his door closed behind her before she let herself relax from the careful poise of indifference. At least she'd been able to find all her clothing before she left his room. It seemed plain enough to her that John was not inclined to linger on the events of last night, let alone revisit them.

Her tea was nearly finished, and Teyla took it to the window where they had stood last night, looking out across the city. Their glasses still sat there on the parquet table, where John had put them, just touching.

She could still feel the way he'd turned to her, suddenly determined, as though something had changed within him. Doubtless, after last night, he had felt the need to cling to some vestige of what he thought he was losing. And Teyla had been there, the tension between them unresolved...

They would be friends, she knew.

It might take him some time to readjust, but he would always return to that commonality in the end.

What was it that the Lantean poet had said?

 _I hold it true, whate'er befall;  
I feel it, when I sorrow most;  
'Tis better to have loved and lost  
Than never to have loved at all._

So she had loved and she had lost, but she would not regret the loving, no matter how hard the loss.

Teyla put her heart away, finished her tea, and went to pack.

\--

Once John had a shower and finished packing his suitcase, he went around the room once, checking for anything that might have been left behind or forgotten. There didn't seem to be anything, but he went around again in the opposite direction, just in case.

Then he sat down on the bed with his elbows on his knees.

 _It will be good to go home._

John took a deep breath.

A new lease of life on one hand, and the death of hope on the other.

He wouldn't do that to another man - he couldn't do that to himself. He'd seen the way the Athosian man had looked at Teyla while he lived in Atlantis, and had been careful not to stare. He'd been careful not to cross any lines that might blur his own boundaries, careful not to do anything that might threaten the other man's certainty of her.

Until last night, he'd succeeded.

And now he had to face the music, full-on. Take the hit, suffer the consequences and let go of something that he hadn't had a right to touch in the first place.

Exhaling, he stood, grabbed his bag and opened the door into the main room.

Teyla's door was open, the sounds of her packing faint and steady.

John dumped his duffle and decided against going to ask if she needed help. He'd begin as he meant to continue, although he didn't know how well his resolve would stand up now.

He called the number for Caldwell and arranged for a pickup time. " _Sometime in the next half hour,_ " was the response. " _We're in the middle of denuding Stargate Command of it's ordinance supply and we can send you down at the same time as we send down that load._ " There was a dry humour to the Colonel's voice - probably at sending John and Teyla and the ordinance all down at the same time.

"Give us a call and we'll be ready," John said, although inwardly he winced. Up to half an hour, waiting with Teyla, with too many things unsaid and not enough words to say them in?

Teyla glanced out the room, her brows lifted in query.

John snapped the phone shut and cleared his throat. "Half an hour. Or about that."

"Should we check out?"

He had no idea. A quick call down to reception showed that all they had to do was return their keys and sign off on the bill and it would be fine. Teyla handed John her key. "I will remain here with the bags, you settle the bill. Colonel Caldwell may beam us up from here with no-one from the hotel the wiser."

John nodded and went down to pay the bill, which he did in considerably less than the half-hour that Caldwell had allotted them.

He collared an employee to get him back up to the suite on the pretext of having left his card behind. The man probably should have followed him all the way up to the suite to check that he was telling the truth, but didn't. John wasn't about to complain.

"All sorted," he said, closing the door of the suite behind him. "Now we just wait for Caldwell to give us the call."

 "I am making a list of things to get before we return to Pegasus," Teyla said, returning to the table where she had out the hotel's notepaper and a pen. "If I cannot get them myself, could I ask one of the airmen to get it for me?"

"You could probably hand the list to O'Neill and get one of his aides to go scavenger hunting for you," John said, half-smiling. "Doesn't he owe you from some poker game?"

Teyla glanced up and flashed him a smile, beautiful and brilliant as the morning. "He does."

His chest squeezed, almost unbearably, and it must have shown on his face, because her smile died and her eyes grew polite and veiled - the diplomat's face. "Do you regret last night, John?"

"No." That was the easy part of the answer. "But I... Teyla, we can't... Now that we're going back..."

"I understand, John."

Except she didn't. She sat there with her careful trader's composure, so friendly and nice and polite, and said she did, but she couldn't understand why.

"Are you looking forward to seeing Torren again?"

She'd looked back down at the list she was making, her pen tracing over the items she'd already written. Now she looked up, puzzled. "Of course."

"He's a good kid." John swallowed hard. "He should have a good family."

"He has a good family." Teyla's brow furrowed. "John--"

"My dad got a girlfriend when I was nineteen. My mom wasn't good enough for him so...he upgraded to this other woman." Even some twenty-plus years later, he couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice.

Teyla looked at him for a long, silent moment. He didn't need to spell it out for her. "You are not the other man, John."

"Aren't I?" He gestured to his room where the sheets still smelled of sex; where he'd woken up alone and moments later been faced with the realisation that he had a use-by date and it was up. Hotel rooms on Earth and stolen moments in Atlantis. But he wouldn't do that to Kanaan, to Torren's family. He'd made a mistake last night, driven by loneliness and the fear of losing her. He wouldn't let himself make that mistake again. "Teyla--"

"Do you imagine that I should keep you in Atlantis, John? That I should go back to Kanaan when we are on Athos and share his tent?" She stood, and her mouth was white at the edges, her eyes dark and hard. "Do you think me capable of such cruelty?"

"I... No!" This wasn't about her. "Look, Teyla, things are different for your people, I know that. It's not cheating to you."

"But it is cheating to you."

"Yes." And John couldn't be the other man in her life. He'd know when she went back to Athos, and Kanaan would know when he looked at John. The Athosian man wouldn't make a fuss, maybe, but the knowledge would wear him down like water dripping on stone, carving deep channels of pain.

Her lips pressed together and she looked away.

"It's not that I don't... Last night was..." John knew his cheeks were burning, could feel his blood pulsing just at the thought. "It was... It was better than good. But we can't... Now that we're going back, we can't. _I_ can't."

Teyla looked away, out towards the glass windows of the suite and the silence stood between them, an impossible barrier to cross. John exhaled as she turned back to look at him, her gaze shadowed. "And you will be okay with this?"

"I have to be. It's not like I haven't done this before."

The words were out before he could censor them, but John felt no shame at the admission - not anymore. They were friends, and if he wanted more - well, he'd always wanted more from Teyla than she seemed willing to give. The risks had always been on her side, not his - the perceptions of the expedition and her status among them, her position as an ally of Atlantis if things went wrong, what her people would think of her taking up with a stranger...

It would be worse now they'd slept together, but he'd manage as he always had.

 _We'll always have Paris..._

Teyla sighed and looked down at her hands, fingertips resting on the notepad. "Kanaan and I are not together, John. Not since he left Atlantis."

He stared at her, trying to work his brain around the thought. Trying to stifle the sudden catch in his breath, the lurch in his chest.

"You would not be the 'other man' in any case, for there is no-one to play the role of cheated husband." Her smile was slightly rueful, and a little grim. "And I know your people's ways, and I know you, John. I would never make you settle for sharing me with another man."

He couldn't think, couldn't speak. He could only stare at her, knowing he'd misjudged her, wondering if he'd screwed it up again - and this time, beyond repair. She didn't say anything, waiting for his reaction, and after a moment, she looked away, biting her lip as though pained by something.

"I thought I could," John said at last. He dragged his hands through his hair. "Last night, after...the second time. I thought I could. And then, this morning..."

"You realised you could not."

"No."

"John," she said, and her voice was soft with a tremor to her speech. "Ask me to satisfy you and I will."

The same offer she'd made last night. All he had to do was accept it - to take what he wanted instead of hanging back.

It hung there between them. John took a deep breath.

"Will you?"

"I will."

She held out her hand to him. John took one step and slid his fingers into hers and bent to kiss her with a relief that was almost euphoric.

The phone in his pocket buzzed.

Teyla began to laugh, her breath tickling his jaw. John sighed, then turned his head and kissed her. Just one quick--

Caldwell sounded slightly peeved when John got the phone to his ear. "Are you ready, Colonel?"

"Yeah, we're just grabbing our stuff."

Teyla had already disentangled herself, tearing her list of things off the pad and hurrying around to gather up their duffels.

"You've got a minute, unless you suddenly think of something you left behind."

"Copy that, sir." John put the phone back in his pocket and took his duffle from Teyla. They faced each other for a moment. "We're going to talk about this later."

"Yes," she agreed. "We will."

It felt like something was trying to burst out of John's chest. It felt perilously close to joy. "Ready to go home?"

"Yes," Teyla said. "Very ready."

Her knuckles brushed his as she took her place beside him, facing out to the city where they'd loved and found each other.

John glanced down at her, and met her smile.

Then there was the flash of the transporter beam, taking them on the first step of their journey home.


End file.
